Quotes About Philosophy

Gross National Happiness is more important than Gross Domestic Product. attr to Buthan's King Jigme Singye Wangchuck

The GDP rises whenever money changes hands....The whole thing is reminiscent of Edward Abbey's reflection that "growth for the sake of growth is the philosophy of the cancer cell.

The ancient Greeks told of a philosopher eating bread and lentils for dinner. He was approached by another man, who lived sumptuously by flattering the king. Said the flatterer, "If you would learn to be subservient to the king, you would not have to live on lentils." The philosopher replied, "If you would learn to live on lentils, you would not have to give up your independence in order to be docile and acquiescent to the king.

There are two novels that can transform a bookish 14-year-kid's life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish daydream that can lead to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood in which large chunks of the day are spent inventing ways to make real life more like a fantasy novel. The other is a book about orcs.

One of the many marks of a philosophical sensibility is an obsession with problems which most sane people regard as not worth bothering about.

The best objects to think with are words, because that is part of what words are for. Indeed, it is a condition for something to be a word that it be thinkable. But

There is, in short, no way for us to picture subjectivity as part of our worldview because, so to speak, the subjectivity in question is the picturing.

institutional facts in general require language because the language is partly constitutive of the facts. But

Falsafah tidak pernah terlepas daripada sejarah. Kadang-kadang saya terfikir ada bagusnya jika saya terus menyata kebenaran tentang sesebuah soalan kepada pelajar saya lalu mengakhiri syarahan. Tetapi pendekatan membelakangi sejarah sedemikian rupa cenderung menghasil kedangkalan falsafah.

It seems a fantastic paradox, but it is nevertheless a most important truth, that no architecture can be truly noble which is not imperfect.

He is the greatest artist who has embodied, in the sum of his works, the greatest number of the greatest ideas.

All books are divisible into two classes: the books of the hours, and the books of all Time.

Remember that the most beautiful things in the world are the most useless.

Why worry about things you have no control over?

But could something think, understand, and so on solely in virtue of being a computer with the right sort of program? Could instantiating a program, the right program of course, by itself be a sufficient condition of understanding?" This I think is the right question to ask, though it is usually confused with one or more of the earlier questions, and the answer to it is no.

Why do the same people who believe in those deities doubt the existence of darker spirits? I ask all of you, how can a person believe in the light but not the dark?

I think about those words a lot, and I think about their spirits too. If you believe in those sorts of things. I do and I don't believe. But mostly— mostly, mostly— I do.

From cell phones to computers, quality is improving and costs are shrinking as companies fight to offer the public the best product at the best price. But this philosophy is sadly missing from our health-care insurance system.

To be—what? What to be? That is the question.

For the jungle dissolves and recreates over and over and over again, as the Hindu philosophers perceived millenniums ago and built their religion on it. All that we know of things that died more anciently than a month ago, is written in stone or brick or earthwork, or, perhaps more durable even than these, in legend.

The second fundamental error of Buddha consists in his placing human excellence in meditation rather than in action. The hero with him is always a saint, never a king.

True it is, no doubt, in the order of abstract relationship, thought is the father of speech, and speech is the harbinger of deed; but this abstract fatherhood of thought is a thing in itself absolutely without reality; the mere thought of an orange, though entertained and cherished in the most capacious of fertile brains for infinite ages, will never produce an orange.

The duty of man is the same in respect to his own nature as in respect to the nature of all other things, namely not to follow it but to amend it.

Actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness. By happiness is intended pleasure and the absence of pain.